Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, in an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

When no one really felt compelled to make the case that mothers matter until the onset of so-called same-sex marriage,

it is only within the last decade or so that we've pretended that the ones who physically bear and nurture

children who do the most listening and worrying who are the first ones small kids run to when

their hurt or scared are somehow replaceable. It is of course ridiculous, really, as ridiculous as

those photos of two men laying in a hospital bed as if either one of them had just given birth.

Of course, mothers matter,

but Father's Day is a great opportunity to also say that fathers matter. The importance of fathers

was overlooked by social science research until recent decades. But now, study after study continues

to reveal ways that dads are uniquely significant and integral to their children's growth and well-being.

In fact, what the research is clearly showing is not only that moms and dads matter, but

it's the differences between moms and dads that matter most. Years ago, I interviewed one of the

early voices to make this case to a secular audience, the late Paul Rayburn normally wrote about research

and discoveries from the hard sciences like chemistry, physics, and biology. He wrote on these

scientific topics for popular publications like the New York Times, science, psychology today,

and others. However, in 2014, Rayburn detoured into the social sciences to explore the topic of fatherhood.

When I asked him why, he told me, and I quote,

I've got five kids, I wanted to know if I mattered.

Well, his conclusion, detailed in the book, Do Fathers Matter, was a resounding yes.

Fathers, he found, contribute far more than genes and hopefully just a paycheck. Drawing on the

work of neuroscientist, animal behaviorist, geneticist, and developmental psychologist, Rayburn

...